Cygnus X-1 contains a 21-solar mass black hole -- implications for massive star winds

The evolution of massive stars is influenced by the mass lost to stellar winds over their lifetimes. These winds limit the masses of the stellar remnants (such as black holes) that the stars ultimately produce. We use radio astrometry to refine the distance to the black hole X-ray binary Cygnus X-1,...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:arXiv.org 2021-02
Main Authors: Miller-Jones, James C A, Bahramian, Arash, Orosz, Jerome A, Mandel, Ilya, Gou, Lijun, Maccarone, Thomas J, Neijssel, Coenraad J, Zhao, Xueshan, Ziółkowski, Janusz, Reid, Mark J, Uttley, Phil, Zheng, Xueying, Do-Young, Byun, Dodson, Richard, Grinberg, Victoria, Jung, Taehyun, Jeong-Sook, Kim, Marcote, Benito, Markoff, Sera, Rioja, María J, Rushton, Anthony P, Russell, David M, Sivakoff, Gregory R, Tetarenko, Alexandra J, Tudose, Valeriu, Wilms, Joern
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Astrometry
Binary stars
Black holes
Massive stars
Metallicity
Space telescopes
Stellar evolution
Stellar mass
Stellar winds
X ray binaries
X ray stars
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Summary:The evolution of massive stars is influenced by the mass lost to stellar winds over their lifetimes. These winds limit the masses of the stellar remnants (such as black holes) that the stars ultimately produce. We use radio astrometry to refine the distance to the black hole X-ray binary Cygnus X-1, which we find to be \(2.22^{+0.18}_{-0.17}\) kiloparsecs. When combined with previous optical data, this implies a black hole mass of \(21.2\pm2.2\) solar masses, higher than previous measurements. The formation of such a high-mass black hole in a high-metallicity system constrains wind mass loss from massive stars.
ISSN:2331-8422
DOI:10.48550/arxiv.2102.09091